The poor Flaming Lips and their painfully overdue film, “Christmas On Mars,” a flick that we’ve dogged so hard cause they’ve literally missed every deadline they’ve ever discussed and talked the film up so much it began to sound as real as the Easter Bunny.
Well, the film is done and recently has its debut at the Sasquatch film festival. Hippies and jam band fans will also be able to catch it at the Bonaroo music festival this weekend on Sunday June 15 (with lead Lip Wayne Coyne introducing the film)
Is the film finally coming to DVD this Christmas? According to an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Wayne Coyne says it should be ready for your stockings. Is he the boy who cried wolf like he has for almost eight years? We’ll soon find out, but given the fact that it’s begun screening this summer, there’s a least some chance that this will in fact become truth (given an Xmas miracle?)
EW notes that the film cost $300,000 and seven years to make, not to mention countless trips to Home Depot. The black and white film is a psychedelic space odyssey and centers on a depressed colony and their salvation at the hands of Mr. Claus. “I want kids to to fill in every gape with their imagination,” Coyne said. “I did that with movies my whole life. I never really knew what fucking ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ was about.” The DVD is expected to be available “around the “holiday season.” The film was also expected to be finished in 2003. 😉
The full Bonaroo Cinema schedule is over at the music fest’s site. Attendees will be able to also catch early screenings of “Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson,” and harder-to-see (unless you own on DVD) fare like recent rock-docs / music related films, “Heavy Metal in Baghdad,” Daft Punk’s “Electroma,” Sigur Rós’ “Heima,” and “Body of War.”
“Christmas On Mars” features appearances by the Lips themselves, Modest Mouse’s Issac Brock, Fred Armisen, Elijah Wood, Steve Burns and our good buddy and number#1 fan Adam Goldberg (dude, “2 Days in Paris,” was sinceriously good, we love your work).